The present invention is related to email and task processing, and more particularly to providing fully integrated and expanded email and task management system and methods.
Different varieties of task management systems and email software programs are used in office environments. Email programs provide communications between workers while task management programs allow individual workers to manage their assigned tasks. Even if both types of programs are contained in one software package, they are disjointed and do not offer a sufficiently integrated functionality.
Tasks to be completed are often not explicitly sent out or specified as tasks, but are received as part of an email and new tasks are then created manually in a task management system by a worker. Task fulfillment often requires information received in additional emails or might be impacted by the information in incoming emails. In complex tasks, often more than one email is relevant and has to be considered when executing a task.
For the person working on a task many problems commonly arise. If tasks are kept independently of emails, the user has to manually search for and open all related emails whenever working on a task. Relevant information is easy to be missed. Email programs do not provide functionality such as internally linking emails that relate to one task to be accessed in the task management system. Updates on a task that are sent out via email might not be considered or recognized as relevant by a task management system.
Usually to fulfill a task, several documents (emails, web pages, files, etc,) are required. These documents are often collected and opened by the user fulfilling the task every time the individual works on it. Attachments to tasks in MS Outlook for example are possible, but these are local documents. If changes are made to the original documents, they are not updated globally so other individuals are not aware of the current status of the task.
When a task is completed, often participants that should receive a notification are missed or documents are not attached. Finally, archiving of completed tasks is not often done or does not include all the necessary documents.
Therefore existing email and task management programs do not provide adequate solutions and integrations for today's office environment.